With performance falling, investors fleeing and offices closing, hedge funds had a rough 2016. But San Francisco-based Numerai was just getting started. Instead of relying on the genius of a single person or small team, the firm uses encrypted data sets to crowdsource stock market prediction models built with artificial intelligence from 12,000 anonymous data scientists worldwide who compete to win bitcoin. And if that flew over your head, the main takeaways are that this hedge fund has orders of magnitude more data scientists trying to improve its investing strategy than the biggest name hedge funds today, and what makes the firm possible is a confluence of technologies that didn't even exist a few years ago -- primarily in cryptography and artificial intelligence. Now the one-year-old company, founded by 29-year-old South African Richard Craib (a Forbes 30 Under 30 designee) and funded by the likes of Union Square Ventures, is launching its own cryptocurrency, the Numeraire. It is the first virtual currency issued by a hedge fund and one of the first released by a company (rather than a group of developers or a non-profit).

I'm a big Star Wars fan, so when "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" descended on theaters late last year, I braved the crowds to see it -- twice in the first 18 hours. And just like all the other Star Wars movies, "Rogue One" stoked our geeky imaginations with all the technological possibilities of a galaxy far, far away, like holographic displays and all sorts of strange devices. And did you notice the Imperial server farm? Of course, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) was well-represented too: Like C-3P0, R2-D2 and BB-8 in earlier movies, Rogue One's K-2SO displayed uncanny humanness. The futuristic Star Wars-esque world is still mostly the stuff of Hollywood movies, but technology visionaries are hard at work bringing us ever closer.

Significant advances in artificial intelligence over the past few years have broadened AI's reach into industries such as healthcare, finance and even retail. Businesses and consumers alike are benefiting from the rise of big data and the growth of AI techniques like deep learning and natural language processing. But we're still only scratching the surface of what is possible with AI, and the full impact of the technology may be years away. In the near-future, however, AI advances will give rise to increasingly powerful applications like personal assistants with more robust utility in the workplace and in our personal lives. These assistants could provide personalized information, help us make more informed decisions, and perhaps even provide physical assistance.

Conversation has been the most powerful way humans communicate with each other for thousands of years. AI visionaries believe that in just three to five years, computer conversational abilities will advance significantly, paving the way for a bevy of life-changing AI applications. How will conversation advance and what are the possible applications?

Virtual Assistants are the base of new world that is being build with advancement in Artificial Intelligence. A virtual Assistant helps a user with so many things like reading mails, setting remainders, gathering news and performing other tasks. There are so many Virtual Assistants available for PC on internet and some of them are very good. Today we will discuss about. We have Cortana on the top of the list because it comes pre-installed with windows 10.

It is no mystery why poker is such a popular pastime: the dynamic card game produces drama in spades as players are locked in a complicated tango of acting and reacting that becomes increasingly tense with each escalating bet. The same elements that make poker so entertaining have also created a complex problem for artificial intelligence (AI). A study published today in Science describes an AI system called DeepStack that recently defeated professional human players in heads-up, no-limit Texas hold'em poker, an achievement that represents a leap forward in the types of problems AI systems can solve. DeepStack, developed by researchers at the University of Alberta, relies on the use of artificial neural networks that researchers trained ahead of time to develop poker intuition. During play, DeepStack uses its poker smarts to break down a complicated game into smaller, more manageable pieces that it can then work through on the fly.

This was the gist of a conversation between three automotive experts during a recent episode of SAP's Future of Cars with Game-Changers radio broadcast. Hosted by Bonnie D. Graham, the show focused on the transformations car manufacturers and their customers can look forward to as connected cars hit the road in growing numbers. The car industry has to wake up to a future of manufacturing, which Larry Stolle, Sr. Director, Global Automotive Marketing at SAP, said "isn't about screwing a nut on a bolt anymore…the opportunity is so huge to retrain, to reinvest, and to develop skills necessary to create innovation today…in technology, robot design, plant design, product designs – those are where the real capital of the future is." Companies also have to equip future employees with the technology skills for tomorrow's auto factories. According to Kim Knickle, Research Vice President at IDC, effective workforce education starts in elementary school with a diverse population of children by gender and ethnicity.

High-performance graphics cards, typically associated with gaming, have become popular over the last few years in an area many might not expect: artificial intelligence. Many experts attribute recent acceleration of success in AI to a wider availability and use of graphics processing units (GPUs), as their advantages include cores designed for running multiple tasks simultaneously, which can efficiently handle the vector and matrix operations that are prevalent in deep learning. Training and deploying state of the art deep neural networks is very computationally intensive, and, while modern GPUs offer high density computation, researchers need more than a fast processor -- they also need optimized libraries, and tools to efficiently program so that they can experiment with new ideas. Bryan Catanzaro, VP of Applied Deep Learning Research at NVIDIA, joined us at the 2017 Deep Learning Summit in San Francisco, to share expertise on GPUs and platforms for deep learning, as well as giving insights on the latest deep learning developments at NVIDIA. I asked him some questions at the summit to learn more about his work. What motivated you to begin your work in deep learning?

An analysis of robots used in homes, businesses and industrial installations has revealed many of the same basic weaknesses that are common in IoT devices, raising questions about security implications for human safety. The robotics industry has already seen significant growth in recent years and will only further accelerate. Robots are expected to serve in many roles, from assisting people in homes, stores and medical facilities, to manufacturing in factories and even handling security and law enforcement tasks. "When you think of robots as computers with arms, legs or wheels, they become kinetic IoT devices that, if hacked, can pose new serious threats we have never encountered before," researchers from cybersecurity consultancy firm IOActive said in a new report. "As human-robot interactions improve and evolve, new attack vectors emerge and threat scenarios expand," the researchers said.

Despite the introduction of all sorts of new technology, a myriad of new channels and a host of self-service options, when things go wrong, get complicated or become difficult for customers most of them will want to pick up the phone and talk to another human being. That behaviour makes phone conversations an integral and hugely important part of the whole customer experience, whether the conversations take place at the beginning (sales), middle (service) or the end (renewal) of the customer's journey. However, the problem with phone conversations is that they don't always go as well as companies or customers would like. And, following a phone conversation it's not uncommon to hear phrases like: "It felt like they were more interested in selling me something rather than fixing my problem" So, in the midst of all the new and exciting technology that is emerging, it's exciting to see some technologists turning their attention to phone conversations and how companies can use advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI), behavioural science, analytics and deep learning to help companies improve the conversations they have with their customers. Here are a couple of examples of two firms that I have come across in the last few weeks that are using advanced technology, in different ways and at different parts of the customer journey, to help improve conversations with customers.